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Deposed Maldives President ‘at Risk,’ Say Climate Activists
February 09, 2012

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is 'at risk,' according to climate change activists who have launched a global petition on his behalf. (AP Photo/Sinan Hussain)
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Paris. Maldives’ ex-president Mohamed Nasheed, who told AFP on Wednesday that he was forced to resign, is “at risk,” according to climate change activists who have launched a global petition on his behalf.

“Tell your national leaders: We are deeply concerned about the recent coup that forced (Nasheed) from office and is currently keeping him under house arrest,” 350.org said on its Web site, which provides a Web form for emailing the petition.

“President Nasheed was the first democratically elected leader of his country and a global voice for action to address the climate crisis. He needs your support to ensure his safety,” the organization said.

“Please put diplomatic pressure on the leaders of this coup to avoid violence and to work for a peaceful, democratic solution to their conflict.”

Nasheed, speaking by telephone from the capital Male, told AFP that he resigned under the threat of violence from some 18 “middle-ranking” police and army officers.

“They told me if I didn’t resign they would resort to use arms,” he said. “I took it as a threat. I wanted to negotiate the lives of the people who were serving in my government.”

350.org, a global grassroots campaign calling for a sharp cut in greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, praised Nasheed as a “tireless voice for climate action.”

Many small island nations are already reeling from the impact of rising sea levels and more intense storms, both impacts of global warming, according to scientists.

Nasheed — who once held a cabinet meeting underwater to dramatise the plight of low-lying island states such as his own — often said that beating back the threat of climate change “is a matter of life and death for us.”

“Now it is he specifically who is at risk,” 350.org said in launching the appeal.

Separately, the makers of “The Island President” — a soon-to-be-released documentary about Nasheed that won an award at the Toronto International Film Festival — said they were “deeply concerned” for his safety.

“As filmmakers who spent two years off and on with President Nasheed while making ‘The Island President,’ we witnessed a leader committed to transparent governance, multi-party democracy and the struggle for human rights,” they said in a statement on Facebook.

“This struggle includes his leadership in the fight against climate change that so threatens the Maldives and the rest of us. This is not the first time that Nasheed has suffered a political setback in his fight for justice in the Maldives. We expect this is just the next chapter,” the filmmakers said.

Agence France-Presse